Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Waiting a Long Time for Nothing...

0926_ABLO_BalloonFest
The Big Country Balloon Fest is one of the coolest events Abilene has every year. Maybe it's just my boyhood obsession with flight, but this event is really cool... when the wind doesn't blow. I know, it's kind of ironic, a hot air balloon which uses no form of propulsion can't fly in windy conditions. But, anything over a couple miles an hour (I think it's five, but not totally sure) and the wind is blowing too hard for it to fly. And, considering, that's kind of what West Texas is know for, it's pretty funny these things ever get up. But they did, and the two previous mornings, plenty of balloons went up, however, I wasn't assigned to shoot the event those days. So, when I got up at 6:30am on Sunday morning and got there and no one was getting their balloons out, I started to get nervous. So I sat, waiting... waiting... waiting... I was told the balloon pilots were having a meeting and hoping the wind would die down. After almost two hours the wind had died down, but no one was going up. Finally one brave balloon pilot started to go up, I ran out there and got a few shots of them getting ready to go up, but with only one balloon it just wasn't all that great, then I got back to the office later in the day and found out this is the same balloon that ran 2 days earlier. Oh well, there's always next year.

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